Well, this should be fun. Bruce Rauner, the venture capitalist from Winnetka who wants to kneecap the public employee unions to turn Illinois into a pro-business state like Indiana, has done what other wealthy upstarts have failed to do in this state — defeat a party establishment.

With his narrow win Tuesday over a surging Kirk Dillard, Rauner has set up an ideological battle with Gov. Pat Quinn, a onetime reformer who has morphed into an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Democrat. The governor will use the full power of incumbency to distribute state grants in key locations around the state to win support.

Quinn’s campaign evidently anticipated the outcome of the Republican race. The governor ran TV ads attacking Rauner before the polls closed. Quinn won his Democratic primary against Tio Hardiman, a protest candidate who still got 25 percent of the vote.

But who is Bruce Rauner? Is he the conservative union buster who wants to remake Illinois in the way Republican governors have changed Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin?

Or is he Bruce Rauner, a social liberal who has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and is a good friend of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel?

Surprise! He’s both. Rauner’s passion is education reform, and he’s worked closely with Emanuel on that over the years.

However, Rauner’s strong, anti-union stand will do something the Democrats probably can’t do on their own ­— unite the government unionists’ votes behind Quinn.

What Rauner has is an unlimited amount of his own money, which he made as a venture capitalist, a job that included managing pensions for government retirees in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Republicans nationwide will want to help Rauner defeat a Democratic governor in President Barack Obama’s home state.

Dillard, a DuPage County state senator, surged in the last weeks of the campaign, but the election came along too soon to help him win. Dillard had hoped that his union endorsements ­— specifically from teacher unions — would help him. It may have, but not quite enough. This is the third time Dillard has almost become the GOP nominee for governor; in 2010 he came within 200 votes of defeating Bill Brady, who came in third on Tuesday.

Kinzinger wins

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, easily defeated Rockford Tea Party leader David Hale, although Hale scored 20 percent of the vote, a respectable showing considering he had little money to wage a campaign throughout the vast 16th District.

Kinzinger now faces a token Democratic candidate in November, but the district is strongly Republican, so Kinzinger has little to worry about.

Durbin vs. Oberweis

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a Springfield Democrat, can breathe a sigh of relief now that he knows his November opponent will be Republican businessman and state Sen. Jim Oberweis of Sugar Grove, who has run unsuccessfully for the U.S. House, twice for the U.S. Senate, and once for governor.

Page 2 of 2 - Durbin, the Senate majority whip, will be difficult to defeat as he goes for a fourth term, and Republicans are concentrating on Senate races in other states where they have decent chances to knock off incumbent Democrats. Oberweis has personal money, but can he get $20 million? Because that’s how much he’ll need to defeat the second-ranking senator.

Referendums

Area tax referendums for schools and a library didn’t do too well. Voters in the North Suburban Library District defeated a request that was so confusingly worded it’s impossible to know what the heck it was asking voters to do. Here, see if you can understand this: “Shall the North Suburban Library District increase its property tax rate from the lesser of 5 percent or the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index over the prior year to 20.5 percent of equalized assessed value of taxable property for the 2014 levy year?”

If I were asked that question, I’d answer, “This is a trick, isn’t it?”

Voters in Stephenson County soundly rejected a bid for a 1 percent sales tax for school facilities.

Meanwhile, Loves Park voters easily OK’d a one percent sales tax for public infrastructure, which I hope Mayor Darryl Lindberg uses to fix North Alpine Road and widen that too-narrow bridge on Riverside.